Friday, 1 May 2015

And . . . relax

Another day, another dollar, or rather, another week, another wedge*.

It has been a strange week.

As you know, my desire to move to something Cloud-shaped is currently sitting as "my name is on a list". On Wednesday, I decided to ping who would be my new manager when I move, to see if anything had changed, if there was anything I should be doing or anyone I should be chasing. His response was that it was fortuitous that I pinged, since it seems that in the people directory, I was not reporting to him, and why don't I speak to my manager to see if it can stay that way and I can move on over. "Move on over to what?" I asked, and that is where the conversation went a little strange. I have not been offered a job. I have not accepted a job. I have just spoken to people about a desire for a new role. Period.

So, anyway, he suggested I speak to my boss, which I did, and he was pretty much no use. He had not heard anything, did not know why I had moved managers, and found it hard to have a discussion about something when that something was not really anything. I do have some sympathy with him.

Then, to add further to the strangeness, I got a ping from someone leading a Cloud transformation project for another account, my old account as it happens, who said that it seemed my name was in the frame to mature their Cloud solution, and when could I start.

A whole day has passed with me doing nothing. A day full of hassle, escalation, running a team whilst also trying to run my own stack of solutions.

Today, then, I plan to make contact again with my potential new manager, suggest he offers me a job, and if I like it I will accept, and then we are on a sound footing to have conversations with my boss and my current account. Both these are standard practice, but I fear may be more difficult at the moment because my boss has a resource shortage**, and the account is preparing to go in to renegotiation, and have put a freeze on key resources, one of which, frustratingly, is me.

However, all that said, the first step is to setup some tension by having a new job to go to, and then we can start negotiations as to when and how.

At home, we are all very much looking forward to a long weekend. Maggot 1 is now ill, ear infection, and Maggot 2 is recovered and looking forward to training Saturday and a match Sunday, and I am too actually, since I enjoy watching him and the team develop their skills.

I have managed to re-turf the goal-mouth bald patch, and the weather has been sympathetic by raining every day, and I also managed to cut out a couple of tree roots that poked out the lawn too. This weekend I will be cutting the rest of the lawn, and preparing for a feeding session, to try and get it a bit thicker and healthier, so that it can cover the many small baldish patches around the lawn. I am aiming for average at best. If my lawn draws no comments, either positive or negative, then it is good enough for me. With two Maggots always playing one ball sport or another, it is always going to struggle to be perfect, to the point that even average is a big ask.

I hope you have a great weekend, speak next week.

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* only money-related word I could think of starting with "w", except Wonga, which is persona non grata these days
** some of the heat coming from us as we fight for an additional UK-based person to come and "bust some backlog"